What pseudonym did C.S. Lewis use for Spirits in Bondage?

C.S. Lewis published Spirits in Bondage under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton.

The name combined his first name with “Hamilton,” a family name associated with his mother’s side of the family. The book was published in 1919, when Lewis was still a young writer and had not yet become known as a literary scholar or Christian author.

Using a pseudonym was not unusual for poets and other writers, especially when a work was personal or experimental. Spirits in Bondage is a collection of poems concerned with darkness, pain, nature, and the human condition. Its tone differs from the children’s fantasy for which Lewis later became famous.

Lewis’s later books generally appeared under “C.S. Lewis.” Readers should not confuse Clive Hamilton with C.S. Lewis’s brother, Warren Hamilton Lewis, whose middle name was also Hamilton. Warren was Lewis’s lifelong companion and later a historian of the family.